"Taking Back Democracy" a Mother Jones interview with Howard Dean.

[madfloridian]

A couple of paragraphs that caught my interest:

http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2004/10/09_405.html

SNIP...MJ.com: On that note, you talk about the need to keep the grassroots in the Democratic Party organized and energized. How do you do that once there isn’t a presidential election to unite around?

HD: "There’s a whole new cycle of elections coming up in March of '05, which is mostly school boards and city councils and things like that. People have to be active.....So when I talk to people, I tell them, “You get a month off, and then everybody’s got to go back to work.” If you really want a democracy that works, you can’t expect somebody else to do the work. ..."

And on liberalism and centrism and the party:
SNIP..."MJ.com: In the book, you say your positions haven’t changed much from when you were a delegate for Jimmy Carter, but that the party has shifted to the right around you.

HD: It’s true. And the remarkable shift didn’t really occur to me until after I ran for president, because in Vermont I was very much a centrist. I mean, my positions on gun control are probably a little more conservative than most people in the Democratic Party, although I did support the assault-weapons ban and all that. But my position on the death penalty is disturbing to some of my liberal friends, because I do support it in a few instances. I balanced twelve consecutive budgets. And yet, I was the most liberal guy out there other than the three candidates who really didn’t have a chance at winning! Well, that’s ridiculous. What happened to the spectrum of opinion in the Democratic Party? If I’m the most liberal guy and I’m in the center, that means the entire party is moving to the right -- except for those who supported me...."

[MercutioATC]

1. THIS is why I voted for Dean in the primaries.

Can anyone say that he doesn't represent the soul of what we WANT the Party to be, rather than what it's become?

I don't want to turn this into a "Dean was the best man for the job" rant, but I still think that Dean was the best man for the job.

[Voltaire]

2. I will always be a Dean Democrat

We gotta get Kerry in, no question. As for long term survival as a party, I'm following Dr. Dean's example. Same as it ever was for me.

[MercutioATC]

3. Exactly!

Kerry's the first step to making this country what it should be.

[ixion]

4. I've been a Dean supporter since I first read his positions

I'm glad to hear he's still out there fighting to restore our republic, because it confirms what I believed about him from the beginning: that he's someone who is truly committed to the democratic process.

[IrateCitizen]

5. I do somewhat take issue with one thing from this interview

That would be Dean's insistence on fiscal conservatism and balanced budgets.

Now, I don't want to put forth the idea that I believe in wasteful public spending, because I do not. However, according to Keynesian economic theory expanded into the thoughts and theories of the likes of John Kenneth Galbraith, it is sometimes beneficial for the government to run a deficit.

For instance, while I'm certain we can all agree that Bush's military Keynesian spending will do little to propel long-term economic stability, insistence on a balanced budget may not be the answer either. In its 2003 report card, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the US a D+ in infrastructure (http://www.asce.org/reportcard/). If you click on the link, you will see that the total needed costs over 5 years to renovate the nation's infrastructure are in the neighborhood of $1.6 trillion.

Now, investing in infrastructure needs would be a wonderful economic stimulus. The state of disrepair of our infrastructure indirectly costs us billions of dollars annually. If the public sector were to fund a massive rehabilitation and rebuilding project over a decade, it would undoubtedly result in budget deficits over the short term. However, the deficits would likely result in an overall stimulus, albeit a lagging one, as more people were put to work. Furthermore, the long-term benefits would be tremendous, as not only would people and business not have to deal with the shortcomings of dilapidated infrastructure, but they would directly benefit for many years from the infrastructure itself.

By insisting on balanced budgets, the Democrats will be failing just as much as the Republicans in meeting the real challenges that face us on the domestic front. The key is framing the argument in a way that highlights the wastefulness of Republican deficits while simultaneously imprinting the overall benefits of increased infrastructure spending.

[Larkspur]

6. Keynesian policies didn't get the US out of the Great Depression

While Keynesian policies had a positive short-term lift to the economy, by itself it would not have made economic gains to thwart the Great Depression. It was World War II with it's massive demand for supplies and products that got the USA out of the Great Depression. Unfortunately, post-WWII America kept this hyperactive model of supply and demand based upon short-term war needs in practice. Consumerism and reliance on bottom-line profit margins became the new economic model.

At best Keynesian helped stem the slide of the Great Depression, but it couldn't generate a strong enough economy to overcome the Great Depression. Personally, I favor the economic philosophies of Dr. W. Edwards Deming http://www.lii.net/deming.html and Paul Hawken http://www.natcap.org/ .

[IrateCitizen]

7. What exactly was the WWII buildup, then?

I understand what you're saying, Larkspur, but I don't think you're fully getting what is required for a Keynesian stimulus.

John Kenneth Galbraith, among others, has argued many times that the New Deal was really little more than half-hearted Keynesian measures -- that the REAL Keynesian stimulus WAS the WWII economy. While debating this can ultimately degenerate into an argument over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, this outlook does have a certain amount of legitimacy in economic circles.

I also agree with you regarding Paul Hawken. Natural Capitalism is an interesting philosophy, one which captures many of my thoughts on economic matters and how they pertain to the environment and society.

Galbraith has also argued that Keynes would not be quite so adamant about production nowadays, as he said in The Affluent Society in 1957 that we had become consumed with production for its own sake to the point that it was becoming destructive on our economy and society. If Keynes was known for anything, it was his ability to change his theories based on the introduction of new evidence. You and I seem to be in agreement on this point, as your first paragraph echoes many of the concerns of JKG back in 1957.

Going back to the public spending issue, however, I think that we can say that our situation is not nearly as dire as the Great Depression right now. Therefore, it stands to reason that an influx of public monies toward rehabilitation of our infrastructure would be a GOOD thing, and could facilitate a real economic recovery (and perhaps reorientation, to a certain degree). If we're going to be adamant about the importance of balanced budgets, as Gov. Dean is, then we'd better bring up how such obtuseness on the part of the Hoover administration helped to hasten the oncoming of the Great Depression by insisting on a balanced budget in the face of a rapidly deteriorating economy. When your receipts are diminishing, in order to keep expenditures in line, you must diminish them as well -- exactly at the time when many people need those expenditures to INCREASE so that they can meet basic needs.

All things considered, I think that an unshakable faith in balanced budgets is dangerous. I'll stick with the theory of "priming the pump", simply because it's been proven to work much better in times of crisis than balanced budgets have.

[Larkspur]

8. Spending can become a form of addiction and that is what I think Dean

worries about when people advocate deficit spending to solve problems. Addicts have a hard time quitting their addiction and even after they commit to do so, the suffering is great. Going into deficit means having to pay interest on top of principal. That interest helps banks, but costs taxpayers money with maybe nothing positive to show for it.

What Dean meant by advocating balanced budgets is that when the state has little or no deficit, it has money to help the unfortunate, to loan to business, especially small businesses, and it has a better chance of borrowing money to finance it during emergencies.

For a short term jolt to get the economy growing, government can go into a deficit by building or restructuring the nation's infrastructure, which is used by business and individual citizens. I think Dean would see this as a worthy investment that taxpayers would approve of because it supported the commonwealth of the nation, but he would not support a deficit spawned by bad wars or bad polcies, regardless if the policies were liberal or conservative.

When Dean became governor of VT, VT's deficit cursed it with the worse bond rating in New England, which made it more difficult to borrow for emergencies and left little to nothing to help the unfortunate and small businesses. I think this episode in his life along with his personal frugality is why Dean abhors deficit spending.

[IrateCitizen]

9. And if that is truly Dean's stance, I'd largely agree with it.

I'm just a little overly sensitive about the way we FRAME issues. The Republicans used to always seize upon the concept of "balancing the budget" as a meme for reducing spending on critical social programs.

Therefore, the term is already a somewhat loaded one. When Dean talks of "balanced budgets", the allusion is already there (whether he intends it or not) toward "reducing social spending".

I'm all for fiscal responsibility. Perhaps that's a better term than "balanced budgets". After all, a businessman taking on debt can be a GOOD thing in the long run, so long as that debt is used toward investments that give a good long-term return. I look at public spending on infrastructure in much the same way. Military spending, OTOH, gives no product with a positive, long-term future use, and therefore is a poor choice of debt spending.

All in all, I don't think we're really all that far apart on this issue -- if at all, relatively speaking.